For geeks who like reading

[apersson850]

There are several references to GPS receivers built-in into PDA units, with or without cellphone and other network communication capabilities, in US Patent number 6,816,782.

For those who like to know many details...

You can find it here (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6816782.WKU.&OS=PN/6816782&RS=PN/6816782).

[jonasolof]

I doubt that this would have been an invention acording to european patent standards - not sufficient technology increment.

The techniques are known. Add the Garmin Rhino and the server based cell phone navigation systems Wayfinder and Appello (both swedish incidentally) and you have most of the technology covered. With a minimum of imagination, obvious to anyone with ordinary skill in the art, other means of communication such as IR, BT, pigeons or what ever can be added.

A good patent is short:

"A needle with has a hole for a thread at the sharp end".

That is more or less the claim for the sewing machine by Singer.

In the US, you can claim anything as an invention and it is up to others who think they can afford it to contest the claims in court.

Or did I miss something?

[apersson850]

No, you can't just claim anything in the US as an invetion. At least not nowdays.

Also, a good patent is one that contains so much text, that the competitors, and their attorneys, perhaps don't endure reading all of it, and thus they can't object to the application in time.
Or at least it looks like that.